If you don’t really have a position on copyright except as a cultural hazard, and just flit from flower to flower, copying what you want, sharing what you will, generally taking back whatever cultural liberties seem appropriate at the time, then you are a bee – busily bumbling along.

However, if you do have a position in the copyright debate then the first question to put to you is this:

• “For those few holders who can afford to prosecute it, is copyright still effective in achieving reproduction monopolies for covered works?”

If you answer “Yes”, then you no doubt consider that piracy is negligible and can be written off as youthful exuberance to be remedied by better education and deterrence. In general, you are optimistic for copyright’s future, and believe it will remain a sound basis for anyone to adopt for their business model. An apposite label for you is ostrich – unable to consider things from a broader perspective, reassured by the similar, inward looking agreement of one’s fellows.

If you answer “No”, then there are three main answers to the next question:

• “Can copyright be returned to effectiveness, and if so, how?”

If you answer “Yes, via draconian enforcement – cultural terror“ then you are a hawk – not an uncommon position, though typically found isolated in high positions of power.

If you answer “Yes, via reform, such as by compulsorily licensing the areas in which it is not effective (instituting an Internet mulct)” then you are a dove – clustering for safety in numbers, unwilling to challenge incumbent hawks, espousing appeasement and compromise.

If you answer “No, of course not. Moreover, it follows that the privilege of copyright should be abolished, since it can only serve as a means of enabling copyright oligarchs to spitefully wreak vengeance against the public for having the temerity to re-assert their cultural liberty” then you are an owl – rarely seen, but unafraid to prioritise nature’s principles above political expediency or popularity.

If “No” then there’s another question:

• “Given their 18th century privilege is now worthless except as a means of extorting random file or news sharers, how can artists exchange their labour in a market that is now effectively free?”

The answer is simple: “Enable the artist’s audience to offer the artist money in exchange for further work – on the proviso that copyright is neutralised as a means of extortion, and that the public’s cultural liberty concerning this work and derivatives is restored”.

Obviously, once work and money are exchanged, all can freely distribute and promote the artist’s work through copying it accurately and honestly (being careful not to corrupt or misattribute it, nor misrepresent the artist).

So, what are you? Unconcerned bee, optimistic ostrich, predatory hawk, appeasing dove, or wise owl?

Or would you rather not be so pigeonholed?

Where you stand in resolving this conflict between privilege and liberty is all rather moot. The bees do whatever comes naturally. If the legislators, whatever their feather, do not want to be stung they make the law accord with the bees, not vice versa.

DNA copies and remixes, and nature selects the best. Homo Sapiens copies and remixes accordingly, and mankind learns and progresses the better because of it. It is power that corrupts, and queens so corrupted who legislate contrary to natural law, pretending that it is the suppression of copying and the prohibition of remixing that best advances mankind’s learning and progress.

We must awake from this lie that we have been living, snap out of our collective delusion, realise the empress is naked, and remember that the liberty we were born with is rightfully ours, not Queen Anne’s more privileged subjects. Only willing slaves are seduced by such a snow queen’s suggestion that the sacrifice of her subjects’ liberty serves them more than herself.

I’ve had a little discussion with Nick R Brown and George Ou on the DigitalSociety.org blog in the comments to Nick’s article “Whoa Shelly Roche…Stealing Does Not Equal Free Speech”. The blog says it is “Pro-Culture, Pro-Commerce”, and that’s what I am, so what could we possibly have to argue about?

Unfortunately, due to copyright restrictions in your country, Nick’s and George’s comments cannot be shown. However, thanks to the sophistry of the so-called idea/expression dichotomy some lawyers believe I still have the liberty to paraphrase another’s words (even though those paraphrasings constitute an act of unauthorised copying, i.e. a copyright infringement, which, if I could afford the spondulicks to take it to court, may be regarded by a judge as fair use/dealing).

I start the ball rolling with an example of the difference between ‘theft of intellectual property’ and ‘copyright infringement’.

27th September 2010 at 11:48am, Crosbie said:

If someone burgles your house, takes a copy of your diary, and then removes it as they abscond, then that is THEFT of intellectual property, but just you try getting the police to help you recover it.

If you publish your memoirs as an e-book and a purchaser thereof makes a few copies to share with their friends, then that is the infringement of an 18th century privilege your publisher enjoys – a reproduction monopoly established by The Statute of Anne in 1710 for the benefit of her Stationers’ Company. This was copied by James Madison and unconstitutionally passed in 1790 as the US Copyright act – the annulling of the right to copy in the majority, to leave it, by exclusion, in the hands of a few – an instrument of injustice (per ‘Rights of Man’ by Thomas Paine).

Preventing copyright infringement is therefore a derogation of the right to free speech.

Securing the author’s natural exclusive right to their writings (against theft or copying by burglars) is NOT a derogation of the right to free speech – we can have no liberty to speak that which we do not know, nor liberty to communicate or copy that which we do not have.

27th September 2010 at 2:29pm, Nick’s comment, paraphrased:

Copyright is the law!
For better or worse, all must obey.

27th September 2010 at 3:15pm, Crosbie said:

Not so long ago Nick, someone liberating a slave was considered to have stolen property from the cotton farmer.

Reclamations of liberty do tend to be perceived as theft by those with privileges derogating from it.

Whereas slavery suspends all liberties from a few, copyright suspends a few liberties from all. So it’s a little more socially tolerable.

Remember that copyright even suspends the author’s liberty to copy their own words. Moreover, if they produce a work for hire or sell their copyright to a publisher, they no longer even have the privilege of copying their own words.

Would you still call it theft for an author to make a copy of their own book – contrary to their employer’s or publisher’s privilege?

Copyright indoctrination corrupts our language into a newspeak Orwell would be unsurprised by. We use ‘right’ in place of privilege, ‘steal’ in place of copy, ‘theft’ in place of infringement, and ‘piracy’ in place of cultural liberty.

Prior to 1710 every individual could share and build upon mankind’s folklore, folktales, and folk song. Today only the likes of Disney are permitted such cultural liberty. Human beings must sit back on their couches, pay through the nose, and consume, but not touch, the content that is delivered to them by multinational publishing corporations. ‘Soma’ as Huxley would term it, but ‘content’ works just as well.

27th September 2010 at 5:16pm, George’s comment, paraphrased:

Copyright is nothing like slavery!
An author doesn’t have to part with their privilege.
You can still derive from Grimm even if not Disney.

28th September 2010 at 5:14am, Crosbie said:

I think I was contrasting the quite different way in which liberty is abridged today than it was a century or so ago.

Instead of brutal coercion by slave owners, today we have the kindness of the judicial system dragging youngsters through the courts to fine them millions of dollars for sharing music, imprisoning cinema goers for pointing their iPhones at the cinema screen, recording industry lawyers’ litigious extortion bankrupting thousands of families unable to afford to defend themselves, and soon, households to be disconnected from the Internet merely upon accusation.

So today, yes, it’s a lot more civilised. The enforcement of copyright’s suspension of individuals’ liberty is removed from the crude agricultural environment and hygienically institutionalised behind closed doors – and there but for the grace of God go us all.

One of the Founding Fathers, Thomas Paine, had this to say about privileges in his book Rights of Man:

It is a perversion of terms to say that a charter gives rights. It operates by a contrary effect — that of taking rights away. Rights are inherently in all the inhabitants; but charters, by annulling those rights, in the majority, leave the right, by exclusion, in the hands of a few . . . They . . . consequently are instruments of injustice.

28th September 2010 at 5:58am, George’s comment, paraphrased:

Million dollar fines are ridiculous, but settlements are reasonable.
No-one goes to jail for camming in cinemas!
The mob has no right to take wealth from wealthy.

28th September 2010 at 8:47am, Crosbie said:

You can finesse everything I write as hyperbole, as no doubt apologists for injustice would have done in centuries past, but at some point your suspension of belief must give way to the rising tide of reality.

Emmanuel Nimley: Graduate who used iPhone to record blockbusters inside cinema is jailed for six months in landmark ruling. Not everyone is so enthusiastic to mete out Queen Anne’s 18th century ‘justice’, see Why I am not ashamed of Emmanuel Nimley.

This is nothing to do with envy of others’ accumulation of wealth through the exchange of their labour in a free market, but the exploitation of monopolies obtained through the abrogation of everyone’s liberty to share and build upon their own culture, upon mankind’s science, technology, and arts.

28th September 2010 at 3:50pm, George’s comment, paraphrased:

The Nimley case is a one-off.
You’re suggesting copyright enforcement is violation of human rights.
For my views see “A kinder graduated response system”.

28th September 2010 at 5:28pm, Crosbie said:

I cited the Nimley case because it was the most recent.

This has been going on for years.

Try a search:

• Taiwan Movie Pirate Arrested Camcording The Fast and The Furious
• Montreal Police Arrest Man For Camcording In Theatre
• Woman Jailed 2 Days for Filming Movie Screen Sues Theater
• ANOTHER MOVIE CAMCORDER ARRESTED IN HONG KONG
• Teen Arrested for Recording 20 Second Movie Clip

Yes, copyright is an intrinsic “violation of human rights”, I’ve already agreed this, that it’s a derogation of the natural right to copy from the individual’s liberty. Imprisoning people for pointing their phones at films is extremely offensive. Suggesting that people should have their cultural liberty restored to them is rather kind I’d say. What do copyright holder’s lose except an ability to sue, fine, bankrupt, levy, disconnect, or imprison members of the public? Authors and artists retain the right to exchange their labour, their intellectual work in a consequently free market – and if you have a thousand fans commissioning your work at $10 each, that’s a pretty good deal compared to a 1% royalty from a publisher (if you’re lucky).

29th September 2010 at 1:10am, George’s comment, paraphrased:

Do you really think artists can make a living without copyright, on live performances alone?
I maintain there should be reasonable penalties for infringement.

29th September 2010 at 6:37am, Crosbie said:

On the article of yours that you linked to you say “Now I want to be clear that I am not talking about pirates that are making mass illegal duplications and selling them. Those people need to be severely fined and jailed.” It’s a bit of a challenge to reconcile that with “I personally oppose criminal penalties for copyright infringement or outrageous fines”.

Bear in mind that every youngster auditioning artists’ work via BitTorrent is typically engaged in mass illicit duplications and selling them in the sense of exchanging their valuable bandwidth (sale/commerce is exchange).

Civilisation cannot progress if mankind has perversely enacted laws that prohibit cultural or technological exchange.

If copyright and patent holders’ only source of income is obtained through the exploitation of their privileges then they cannot survive without them – so yes, they need to stop being parasites and find something productive to do that people will pay them for willingly, not through extortion, monopoly, or licensing people’s liberty back to them.

Creators, intellectual workers, authors, inventors, sure, the last things these productive people need are laws that prevent them exchanging, improving, or building upon culture and technology. They can then exchange their labour in a free market.

Copyright and patent are the regime. Their absence is the absence of a coercive regime, a restoration of cultural and technological liberty, leaving us only with our natural rights to be protected by law (not privileges).

As for live performances, who said anything about performances having to be live? A musician can perform in a recording studio as well as in a concert hall. A thousand fans can pay $10 a piece for the recording of a studio performance as much as of a live one. The privilege of a monopoly in copies thereof may well be lucrative to whoever can win that favour from their Queen, but it remains an instrument of injustice. The musician is still able to exchange their labour in performing their music for $10,000 from their thousand fans. If they do not have a thousand fans they are in the same predicament as any craftsman with insufficient demand for their products or services. There is no right to be paid for your labour, only to be free to exchange it for whatever the market will bear. I have no right to be paid for my comments here. Indeed, instead of giving them freely I could have withheld them and instead invited you to commission my participation in discussion with you. There’s nothing wrong in commerce concerning intellectual work, only in the grant of mercantile privileges such as monopoly. Have you not heard “Free as in free speech, not as in free beer”?

29th September 2010 at 10:57am, George’s comment, paraphrased:

Taking work is not cultural exchange. It’s theft.
Copyright and patent were enacted to promote culture and technology. Monopolies encourage giving it away.

29th September 2010 at 12:31pm, Crosbie said:

It is strange that I am the one who must convince you how draconian and severe the measures are that copyright holders will resort to. If I can recognise the exchange of bandwidth as commerce do you think industry lawyers will hesitate to do so too?

While the weapon exists the unscrupulous will wield it, and copyright is indeed a weapon, a most iniquitous instrument of injustice.

If you wish to believe that cultural liberty is theft, that prohibitions against people’s use of their own culture and technology constitute incentives to do so, then such doublethink is your choice, but religious dogma will not get you to the moon. For such progress you must abandon your geocentric programming and dare to consider the heresy of heliocentricity.

The comfort of the blue pill, or the paradigm shift of the red pill?

30th September 2010 at 10:08pm, George’s comment, paraphrased:

It seems you hope for more draconian legislation so you can argue for abolition. I support neither extreme.

1st October 2010 at 1:14pm, Crosbie said:

The copyright maximalists WILL take a harder stance: DMCA, ACTA, COICA (and others like INDUCE). There will be more injustice to come. I’m expecting ‘possession of unlicensed copies of copyright protected works’ to become a crime comparable to ‘possession of a proscribed narcotic with intent to supply’. And I’m expecting you to have your work cut out arguing for leniency, shorter jail terms.

This trajectory is not a matter of hope, but inevitability.

I am not in the business of hoping or lobbying for ever more draconian legislation, but in solving apparently intractable problems, inventing what is necessary, and arriving, when the impossible has been eliminated, at what must be the truth (however incredible or ‘extreme’ you might find it).

The monopoly of copyright is at an end. It cannot be resurrected through argument. However, for the sake of fundamentally innocent people the world over, it can be argued to be abolished – sooner rather than later.

Did you know that the definition of ‘public domain’ as ‘the few published works not protected by copyright’ is very recent?

All published works are supposed to be in the public domain. This was the original pretext behind copyright – to incentivise the delivery of novel and educational works into the public domain – for the public’s benefit (albeit at the cost of cultural liberty).

The modern understanding that copyright protected works are NOT in the public domain is a corruption in meaning we have to thank publishing corporations for. They want to stamp out any notions the public might otherwise get that published works somehow belong to them.

So even today, publication is still supposed to be delivery to the public (into the public domain) of knowledge, art, facts, ideas, etc. An intellectual work is supposed to enter the public domain from the moment of its publication. Allegedly, this delivery is incentivised by copyright.

It is only in the 20th century with the growing recognition by the public of the potential to utilise reproduction and communications technology to share and build upon published works that a work’s copyright status enters into the consciousness of the public at large.

Prior to the 20th century only publishers (or those editors/authors expecting to utilise a published work for inclusion, translation, abridgement, or derivation) were concerned about a published work’s copyright, or as we’d esoterically put it today, whether the work’s fixed expression was in the public domain as well as its ideas.

So it’s a very subtle perceptual shift that has occurred – recently. Only recently with a technologically enabled public is it more important to know whether a work’s fixed expression is available to the public than whether its ideas are.

And that’s why it’s only in the 20th century that ‘public domain’ has changed in meaning from ‘All published works and everything otherwise known to or accessible by the public’ to ‘Anything not protected by copyright’.

With such a gradual transition in meaning paralleling a gradual transition in technology (and publishers’ sabre rattling) there is no single point at which the meaning flipped from one to the other.

And so now, instead of all published works being considered in the public domain irrespective of copyright, everyone happily accepts the myth that ‘public domain’ has always meant ‘Anything not protected by copyright’.

The transition of public from ‘consumers’ to self-publishers trespassed upon the traditional publishers’ territory. That’s why the latter’s semantic inveigling of domain boundaries consolidates the ‘correct’ understanding that 99% of what would have been the public’s own culture properly belongs to immortal publishing corporations (what else would seek to extend an 18th century privilege from 14 years to a period far in excess of mortal lifespans?). Now they would have us believe that not even the ideas are in the public domain. All aspects of a copyright protected work now remain entirely the intellectual property of the copyright holder. Published works have now been repossessed, removed from the public’s grubby mitts and re-enclosed in a quasi-private domain (corporations can have no shame in claiming such human rights as privacy).

We, the public, thus find ourselves in possession of mere scraps, the cultural residue not worth appropriating and enclosing for proper and perpetual commercial exploitation.

Copyright is effectively a tax on the public’s cultural liberty. The state may collect a small portion of that tax to spend on the public’s behalf, but the bulk ends up in the corporations’ coffers (largely foreign). So why not abolish copyright and leave 100% of the value of cultural exchange in the public’s own hands? The state then ends up collecting more in tax from the greater cultural prosperity of its own citizens. The only ones to lose out are those immortals hoping to further exploit, enforce and extend monopolies that are increasingly ineffective – an admittedly very powerful lobby.

Effective intellectual property protection and enforcement are essential for electronic commerce to thrive. Existing intellectual property laws need to be applied in the digital environment.
From: Facilitating the Digital Economy A WITSA Position Paper – 5/98

Today the corporate state attempts to persuade us that unless our culture is ‘protected’ by the monopoly of copyright (a privilege granted to the Stationer’s Guild by Queen Anne in 1710), it cannot be commercially exploited, and so cannot therefore be of benefit to the public. What they would discard to the ‘public domain’ thus becomes a refuse heap full of expired and decomposing cultural detritus, picked over only by desperate scavengers and hardy anthropologists.

The ‘public domain as cultural midden’ is a corruption of meaning by corrupt entities borne of corrupt privileges, both spawned by corrupt legislators in the pockets of the unscrupulously wealthy and powerful.

All published works are in the public domain.

Those members of the public who would enjoy their natural right to copy, their cultural liberty to share and build upon their own culture, should do so – irrespective of copyright, irrespective of being pejoratively labelled as pirates. Mankind’s culture belongs to mankind, not immortal corporations. Are you a human being or a corporate slave?

We will help young people to understand intellectual property (IP), both as buyers and as potential producers – for instance when they upload a work of their own to the internet – as a seamless part of their cultural education.
From: Creative Britain – New Talents for the New Economy – 2/08

Let us say that 35,000 CDs have been released every year since 1980, and will continue to be released.

Let us also say that a CD can generally be represented as a 100MiB MP3 file at an acceptable bit rate.

From the ‘back of envelope’ table below we can estimate that the cost of storing all the CDs ever released on a hard disk drive will fall to about $100 in 2015.

I suggest that the next file sharing application won’t be one that lets people pick and choose which CDs to share or audition. It will simply replicate and distribute EVERYTHING. There won’t even be any point in deleting all the CDs one doesn’t like. The problem will be entirely one of deciding what the heck to listen to.

Even so, once we have discovered the musicians we like there will still be the problem of how to persuade them to make more great music. Even all the music ever released can pale next to one more album from a favourite artist.

Don’t worry. That’s the problem I’m working on – enabling a musician’s fans to exchange their money for the musician’s production of music. It’s not rocket science. You just have to bear in mind that it’s not about enabling CD manufacturers to sell copies, but about enabling musicians to sell their music to their audience – directly instead of via record labels and CD manufacturers.

When you’re selling music instead of digital copies you don’t benefit from a monopoly; on the contrary, you want your music to spread far and wide.

Year	Price of 1TiB HDD	CDs	MP3 TiB	Storage cost
1980	$1,336,434,513.25	35,000	3	$4,460,831,447.94
1981	$735,038,982.29	70,000	7	$4,906,914,592.74
1982	$404,271,440.26	105,000	10	$4,048,204,539.01
1983	$222,349,292.14	140,000	13	$2,968,683,328.61
1984	$122,292,110.68	175,000	17	$2,040,969,788.42
1985	$67,260,660.87	210,000	20	$1,347,040,060.36
1986	$36,993,363.48	245,000	23	$864,350,705.39
1987	$20,346,349.91	280,000	27	$543,306,157.68
1988	$11,190,492.45	315,000	30	$336,170,685.06
1989	$6,154,770.85	350,000	33	$205,437,640.87
1990	$3,385,123.97	385,000	37	$124,289,772.73
1991	$1,861,818.18	420,000	40	$74,573,863.64
1992	$1,024,000.00	455,000	43	$44,433,593.75
1993	$563,200.00	490,000	47	$26,318,359.38
1994	$309,760.00	525,000	50	$15,509,033.20
1995	$170,368.00	560,000	53	$9,098,632.81
1996	$93,702.40	595,000	57	$5,317,013.55
1997	$51,536.32	630,000	60	$3,096,378.63
1998	$28,344.98	665,000	63	$1,797,619.69
1999	$15,589.73	700,000	67	$1,040,727.05
2000	$8,574.35	735,000	70	$601,019.69
2001	$4,715.90	770,000	73	$346,302.24
2002	$2,593.74	805,000	77	$199,123.51
2003	$1,426.55	840,000	80	$114,279.38
2004	$784.61	875,000	83	$65,472.90
2005	$431.53	910,000	87	$37,450.41
2006	$237.34	945,000	90	$21,389.85
2007	$130.54	980,000	93	$12,200.23
2008	$71.79	1,015,000	97	$6,949.38
2009	$39.49	1,050,000	100	$3,953.91
2010	$21.72	1,085,000	103	$2,247.35
2011	$11.95	1,120,000	107	$1,275.91
2012	$6.57	1,155,000	110	$723.68
2013	$3.61	1,190,000	113	$410.09
2014	$1.99	1,225,000	117	$232.18
2015	$1.09	1,260,000	120	$131.35
2016	$0.60	1,295,000	124	$74.25
2017	$0.33	1,330,000	127	$41.94
2018	$0.18	1,365,000	130	$23.67
2019	$0.10	1,400,000	134	$13.35
2020	$0.06	1,435,000	137	$7.53

So, if you’re hoping to fill that hard disk you’d probably better get started today.

Assuming a conservative 20Mbps share rate (given an efficient file-sharing system and no network contention) that works out at around 75TiB per year. In other words, all music ever released could be shared via the successor to BitTorrent within two years at such time as it became economic for everyone to store a duplicate set.

Within a decade, those who don’t share published music will be seen as a burden upon everyone else, akin to the way leechers are already perceived today.

Ian Betteridge is bothered.

He’s immensely irritated by those ‘assholes’ who give good businesses grief by being big and clever – or not.

In this case, the business suffering from grief – in the form of RIAA’s litigious attention – is Muxtape, an online service that simulates the liberty we used to enjoy in recording great music from the radio receiver or Gramophone records onto Compact Cassette tapes in the privacy of our own homes.

Fortunately, some kind coders realised they could greatly improve the service by enabling people to actually make recordings, rather than just pretend they did. There is no harm in this, after all, Muxtape remains unaffected. The same information is sent to users as normal, it’s just that thanks to neat scripts the users actually get to hold the cassette tapes they so lovingly made in their grubby little hands. The digits in their digits, as it were.

So, strangely, just because of this user enhancement, completely beyond the control of Muxtape, the RIAA is leaning on it. Because the RIAA does that sort of thing – to protect its monopolies concerning who gets to make recordings.

It seems Ian Betteridge blames those who improved Muxtape, rather than those monopolists who would prefer it remained a sham, remained a child’s toy as in “Let’s pretend we’re making recordings”, and “Let’s pretend the cassette tape on the screen is actually real”, rather than a useful tool for adults.

I disagree and suggest that we should not blame those who add value just because it upsets those who’d rather that value not be added.

Moreover, on the subject of assholes, these aren’t those big and clever coders who recognise the technical insignificance of the difference between ‘streaming’ and ‘downloading’, but those luddite legislators who decided that the law should recognise a significant difference. The same digital bits are communicated. The law simply holds that their different names, in indicating a different metaphor, distinguish between the delivery of a copy of a recording and its recordable transmission. This reveals the law to be an ass when it comes to the communication of information. It is folly to shoehorn the Internet into metaphors of inked paper and telegraph.

Revealing this anachronistic sophistry may well upset devout believers in a digital distribution/transmission duality. It is also likely to cause political and litigious grief to those businesses attempting to rely upon it – this technically insignificant, but legislatively critical distinction. However, there’s a greater cause at stake than just avoiding any erosion of a fragile metaphor that might bring little businesses to the bullying attentions of their bigger brothers.

The moral imperative of our time is to abolish these mercantile privileges of monopoly, that not only allow corporate bullying and extortion between businesses, but also allow corporations to persecute individual members of the public should they fail to accept the suspension of their cultural liberty.

Having the streaming/downloading sophistry revealed is an inevitability for all businesses, large or small, YouTube or MuxTape. Those entrepreneurs in this field will be technically astute enough to understand the fragile, technically insignificant, though legally significant, difference between streaming user uploaded works and file sharing. It is not the responsibility of the public to cooperate in maintaining any pretence or archaic law: that, of the music legitimately communicated to them, some bits they may keep, some bits they should discard, some bits they may copy, and some bits they should not.

So, rather than admonish people for pointing out the elephant in the room, they should be commended, for the sooner the law finally recognises it the better.

Free speech is free communication of one’s own or another’s published intellectual works, whether by voice, morse code, or TCP/IP, and whether by physical delivery of paper, piano roll, magnetic tape, acetate discs, or memory stick, and without grant of monopoly over any particular pattern or arrangement of expression.